Cleaning Up Trump's Mess, Con't

The Biden administration continues to clean up the Trump toxic waste swamp, ending one dehumanizing, barbaric Trump policy at a time, this time around starting with getting rid of the term "illegal immigrant".

The Biden administration has directed immigration enforcement agencies to stop using references to immigrants that were commonplace under the Trump administration, according to the Washington Post on Monday.

In copies of memos sent to department heads at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection on Monday that were obtained by the Post, the Biden administration details the change in rhetoric that aims to reverse former President Trump’s hardline immigration policies.

The Post reported that changes include “noncitizen or migrant” instead of “alien,” “undocumented” or “illegal,” and “integration” in lieu of “assimilation” when referring to immigrants.

Top officials in CBP and ICE make clear in the memos that under the Biden administration, language that is more inclusive is a top priority.

“As the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, we set a tone and example for our country and partners across the world,” CBP’s top official, Troy Miller, said in his memo, according to the Post. “We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.”

In a separate memo, ICE acting director Tae Johnson expressed a similar sentiment, saying that the agency will ensure “agency communications use the preferred terminology and inclusive language” in response the guidance set by the Biden administration.

The changes in rhetoric regarding immigrants take effect immediately.

The new guidance follows a similar directive from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes green cards and citizenship applications, regarding agency communications such as internal correspondence and public information.

The use of “alien” and “illegal” has commonly been used by Border Patrol agents and ICE in news releases, social media and memos to refer to immigrants taken into custody after entering the country illegally.

 

There's still a lot of mess to clean up though, as evidenced by Biden's latest move taking out the trash on climate change.

The White House has reportedly removed and reassigned a scientist chosen by a Trump administration appointee to oversee the government’s definitive report on the effects of climate change.

Citing two sources close to the matter, The Washington Post reports that Betsy Weatherhead, an experienced atmospheric scientist, has been removed from her position as lead of the National Climate Assessment and been reassigned to U.S. Geological Survey.

According to the Post, officials at the White House Office of Science Technology Policy (OSTP) ultimately made the decision to reassign Weatherhead. The OSTP confirmed Weatherhead’s removal.

Weatherhead's selection was praised by the scientific community at the time, the Post notes, due to her decades of experience as a climate scientist in both academic and private sectors. She once served on the board of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is considered to be an expert on Earth observations, ozone depletion and the intersection of weather and climate.

Individuals close to the situation told the Post there was friction between Weatherhead and officials from the 13 agencies participating in the research program.

Despite her career as a respected climate scientist, the Post notes that Weatherhead has placed importance on communicating scientific uncertainty, which may have been what made her unpopular with the Biden administration.

Weatherhead's ideas for the assessment reportedly clashed with federal officials as she sought to bring in more authors from the private sector and increase the amount of chapters on climate change mitigation.

 

Another Trump bitter clinger, sticking to the ass of the regime like poop, but Biden's more than willing to clean up all the crap.

 

We'll be cleaning up Trump's mess for the rest of my lifetime, I figure.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

After news broke over the weekend of GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar's odious "America First Caucus"neo-Nazi manifesto, everyone's scrambling to get away from the political barrel of gunpowder in the GOP living room, and nobody's scrambling faster than Green and Gosar themselves.

 

Two far-right House Republicans linked to a document calling for the protection of "Anglo-Saxon political traditions" distanced themselves from what they said was a draft of prescriptions for an "America First Caucus."

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said in a Saturday statement that he "did not author" the document and that he became aware of it only after it was reported by the news media, saying he "will continue to work on America First issues in the House Freedom Caucus."

"Let me be perfectly clear. I did not author this paper," he said. "In fact, I first became aware of it by reading about it in the news yesterday, like everyone else."

In addition, Nick Dyer, a spokesperson for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said in a statement that the document was merely "an early planning proposal and nothing was agreed to or approved."

When the document surfaced Friday, Dyer assailed "dirty backstabbing swamp creatures" for sharing it with Punchbowl News, which first reported on its contents and said the effort was linked to Gosar and Greene. "Be on the look out for the release of the America First Caucus platform when it's announced to the public very soon," he said.

Greene released a statement Saturday saying the platform was "a staff level draft proposal from an outside group that I hadn't read."

 

 In the words of Bart Simpson:

 

Don't nobody know who it was that wrote that, but it wasn't us, man!

Greene is meanwhile trying an immediate headfake by going after Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters. 

 

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) announced on Sunday that she plans to introduce a resolution to expel Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) from Congress.

Greene in a statement on Sunday said that she will "be introducing a resolution to expel Rep. Maxine Waters from Congress for her continual incitement of violence."

The Republican lawmaker specifically targeted Waters for speaking to protesters at a demonstration in Brooklyn Center, Minn., on Saturday. Protests broke out in the city last week after police fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop on April 11.

Waters told reporters on Saturday that she is "going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice," adding, "We’ve got to get justice in this country, and we cannot allow these killings to continue," Fox News reported.

The killing of Daunte Wright comes as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial on murder charges in the death of George Floyd last year. Floyd died after Chauvin knelt on his neck for several minutes during an arrest.

Asked about Chauvin’s trial, Waters told reporters that if Chauvin is not found guilty, "we've got to stay on the street, and we've got to get more active. We've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business," according to Fox News, in addition to making other comments on the trial and police brutality in the U.S.

Greene on Sunday claimed that Waters’s comments “led to more violence and a drive by shooting on National Guardsmen in Minnesota early this morning.”

 

It's moronic, racist, and vile, but Greene knows that if the press is focused on her little Mein Kampf tribute to "Anglo-Saxon culture" she's the one in dire trouble. If instead people are talking about how "Maxine Waters is just as bad" then Greene wins completely. 

She's counting on it. Better than even odds that the press is still talking about Waters than Greene by this time next week, and that's exactly what she's hoping for.

We'll see if the media bites, but...

StupidiNews!

• A manhunt is underway in Texas for a shooting suspect after three were killed in Austin, police believe the suspect is armed and dangerous.
• Allies of jailed Russian dissident Alexey Navalny are expected to stage protests this week across the country as reports of the opposition leader's health are grim. 
• Major hedge fund and asset investors are calling on world banks to set tougher global emissions limits ahead of a meeting of world leaders on climate change later this year.
• Talks between Iran and Group of Six nations continue in Vienna as the Biden Administration works to reset the nuclear deal with Tehran scrapped by the Trump regime.
• Three out of eight Americans are now vaccinated against COVID-19, but public health officials worry as resistance to getting the vaccine among the rest of America increases.
  

Suddenly, The Trumpists Love The Press

The Trumpist terrorists who stormed the US Capitol on January 6th are now claiming that they can't be charged with crimes because they are "journalists" and hey, they are protected!

 

At least eight defendants charged in the Jan. 6 riot have identified themselves as a journalist or a documentary filmmaker, including three people arrested this month, according to an Associated Press review of court records in nearly 400 federal cases.

The insurrection led to the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and there were hundreds of injuries. Some rioters manhandled and menaced the reporters and photographers who are credentialed to cover Congress and were trying to cover the mayhem that day. A group of AP journalists had photographic equipment stolen and destroyed outside the building.

One defendant, Shawn Witzemann, told authorities he was inside the Capitol during the riot as part of his work in livestreaming video at protests and has since argued that he was there as a journalist. That explanation did not sway the FBI. The plumber from Farmington, New Mexico, is charged with joining in demonstrating in the Capitol while Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump.

“I seek truth. I speak to sources. I document. I provide commentary. It’s everything that a journalist is,” Witzemann told a New Mexico television station after his arrest April 6. He did not respond to a social media message and email from the AP.

Witzemann’s nightly news show is titled the “Armenian Council for Truth in Journalism” — satirically, his attorney says. On its YouTube page, which has just over 300 subscribers, the show says it “delivers irreverent and thought provoking commentary and analysis, on an eclectic range of subjects.”

Another defendant works for Infowars, the right-wing website operated by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Others have fringe platforms named “Political Trance Tribune,” “Insurgence USA,” “Thunderdome TV” and “Murder the Media News.”

But while the internet has given more people a platform to use their voice, the definition of a “journalist” is not that broad when put into practice in court, said Lucy Dalglish, dean of the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, who used to practice media law as an attorney.

She said it is an easy case to make that Capitol riot defendants were not journalists because reporters and photographers must have credentials to work there. She said any defendant captured on video encouraging rioters cannot credibly claim to be a journalist.

“You are, at that point, an activist with a cellphone, and there were a lot of activists with copyrighted videos who sold them to news organizations,” Dalglish said. “That doesn’t make them journalists.”

Even credentialed reporters and news photographers are not immune from prosecution if they break a law on the job, said Jane Kirtley, who teaches media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota.

“It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Kirtley said.

 

What these assholes want of course is for folks like Greenwald and Alex Jones and Matt Taibbi to declare them "journalists" and come to their defense, and to publicly attack credentialed news organizations for not doing the same. 

 

They're not doing it out of camaraderie for journalists who really are threatened (and let's not forget that these are the same assholes wearing the "a rope, a tree, a journalist" t-shirts during the Trump regime and spewed epithets of FAKE NEWS at the press during Trump's hate rallies) they're doing it to avoid prison for terrorism.

Actual journalists should be enraged at this nonsense.

But watch, we'll have this "argument" over the "fascist, press-hating Biden administration" here very soon.

Sunday Long Read: Your Dreck Support Guy

After Amazon and Google de-platformed Trump's cadre of racist, violent online social media sites like Gab and Parler, they got back online and stay online because of people like 23-year-old Nick Lim, a techbro jackass who just wants the neo-Nazis he runs websites for to have a voice, and they pay him handsomely for it.

Two and a half months before extremists invaded the U.S. Capitol, the far-right wing of the internet suffered a brief collapse. All at once, in the final weeks of the country’s presidential campaign, a handful of prominent sites catering to White supremacists and adherents of the QAnon conspiracy movement stopped functioning. To many of the forums’ most devoted participants, the outage seemed to prove the American political struggle was approaching its apocalyptic endgame. “Dems are making a concerted move across all platforms,” read one characteristic tweet. “The burning of the land foreshadows a massive imperial strike back in the next few days.”

In fact, there’d been no conspiracy to take down the sites; they’d crashed because of a technical glitch with VanwaTech, a tiny company in Vancouver, Wash., that they rely on for various kinds of network infrastructure. They went back online with a simple server reset about an hour later, after the proprietor, 23-year-old Nick Lim, woke up from a nap at his mom’s condo.

Lim founded VanwaTech in late 2019. He hosts some websites directly and provides others with technical services including protection against certain cyberattacks; his annual revenue, he says, is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although small, the operation serves clients including the Daily Stormer, one of America’s most notorious online destinations for overt neo-Nazis, and 8kun, the message board at the center of the QAnon movement, whose adherents were heavily involved in the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Lim exists in a singularly odd corner of the business world. He says he’s not an extremist, just an entrepreneur with a maximalist view of free speech. “There needs to be a me, right?” he says, while eating pho at a Vietnamese restaurant near his headquarters. “Once you get to the point where you look at whether content is safe or unsafe, as soon as you do that, you’ve opened a can of worms.” At best, his apolitical framing comes across as naive; at worst, as preposterous gaslighting. In interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek early in 2020, Lim said he didn’t really know what QAnon was and had no opinion about Donald Trump.

What’s undeniable is the niche Lim is filling. His blip of a company is providing essential tech support for the kinds of violence-prone hate groups and conspiracists that tend to get banned by mainstream providers such as Amazon Web Services.

It’s almost impossible to run a real website without the support of invisible services such as web hosting, domain name registration, and protection against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which involve crashing a site by bombarding it with junk traffic. Getting banned by AWS, Cloudflare, or other infrastructure providers, as the Daily Stormer and 8kun have been, is a step beyond a ban from Facebook or Twitter. It puts the American far right on a short list that includes child pornographers and terrorist organizations such as Islamic State—groups that promote and incite violence and basically aren’t allowed to have websites. “Every time I see an article attacking social media companies—and they deserve it—I think it’s more important to go after the companies that are hosting terrorist material,” says Rita Katz, founder of SITE Intelligence Group, a nonprofit that tracks terrorist activity online. “There’s already a good recipe that was used for ISIS. Why don’t you use it on the far right?”

It’s tougher to keep a site such as the Daily Stormer offline as long as somebody like Lim is willing to support it. U.S. laws governing domestic extremism are less expansive than those focused on international terrorism, partly to protect the rights of U.S. citizens with unpopular political views. And even the big web-hosting companies have struggled to set consistent standards. While Cloudflare has refused to work with the Daily Stormer, it supports other sites peddling racism, including those for Stormfront and the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. The overlap between Republican Party officials and the belief systems that sparked the Capitol attack, which started out as a Trump rally, can make it all the tougher to draw clear lines.

Voices from across the U.S. political spectrum have registered concerns about companies setting up litmus tests to ban groups from the internet. That said, the voices Lim supports tend to come from the same general neighborhood. He sought out Andrew Anglin, who runs the Daily Stormer, to offer the neo-Nazi free tech support. He says his largest customer is 8kun, and he has a personal relationship with Ron Watkins, the site’s former administrator and one of its key leaders since its inception.

Lim argues that the real political crisis facing the U.S. is not extremist violence but erosion of the First Amendment. He says that restrictions on online speech have already brought the U.S. to the verge of communist tyranny, that “we are one foot away from 1984.” After a moment, though, he offers a sizable qualifier: “I never actually read the book, so I don’t know all the themes of the book. But I have heard the concepts, and I’ve seen some things, and I thought, ‘Whoa! That’s sketchy as f---.’ ”

 

There are real first amendment issues, even under the Biden Administration, in 2021. The Daily Stormer website is not one of them. We had an attempted political coup on the US Capitol with the intent of killing enough lawmakers to make Trump President to steal and election and establish a military dictatorship, and people are still wondering why I think a Second Civil War is inevitable, complete with a body count in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

That wouldn't have been possible without Nick Lim.

That's not a good thing.

Trump Without The Baggage

GOP donors have settled on their Trump 2.0 experiment, and it's GOP Gov Ron DeSantis of Florida, as right-wing Washington Post columnist Ross Douthat points out. The problem is for once, Douthat is actually right. If nobody finds a way to stop DeSantis, he will be President in 2024, along with a Republican Congress, and then it's 100% over.

 

The proximate cause of the enthusiasm for DeSantis is his handling of the pandemic, and the media’s attempted manhandling of him. When the Florida governor began reopening Florida last May, faster than some experts advised, he was cast as a feckless mini-Trump, the mayor from “Jaws” (complete with open, crowded beaches), the ultimate case study in “Florida Man” stupidity.

A year later, DeSantis is claiming vindication: His state’s Covid deaths per capita are slightly lower than the nation’s despite an aged and vulnerable population, his strategy of sealing off nursing homes while reopening schools for the fall looks like social and scientific wisdom, and his gubernatorial foils, the liberal governors cast as heroes by the press, have stumbled and fallen in various ways.

Meanwhile many media attacks on his governance have fizzled or boomeranged, most notably a “60 Minutes” hit piece that claimed to have uncovered corruption in the state’s use of the Publix supermarket for its vaccination efforts but produced no smoking gun, conspicuously edited out much of DeSantis’s rebuttal, and fell afoul of fact checkers. The governor’s public outrage in response was justified, but he must have been privately delighted, since there’s nothing that boosts the standing of a Republican politician quite like being attacked deceptively or unsuccessfully by the press.

So DeSantis has a good narrative for the Covid era — but his appeal as a post-Trump figure goes deeper than just the pandemic and its battles. The state he governs isn’t just a test case for Covid policy. It’s also been an object lesson in the adaptability of the Republican Party in the face of demographic trends that were supposed to spell its doom.

When the 2000 election famously came down to a statistical tie in Florida, many Democrats reasonably assumed that by 2020 they would be winning the state handily, thanks to its growing Hispanic population and generational turnover among Cuban-Americans, with an anti-Castro and right-wing older generation giving way to a more liberal younger one. But instead Florida’s Democrats keep falling short of power, and the Republicans keep finding new ways to win, culminating in 2020, when the Trump-led G.O.P. made dramatic inroads with Hispanics in Miami-Dade County and took the state with relative ease.

DeSantis’s career has been a distillation of this Florida-Republican adaptability. Born in Jacksonville, he went from being a double-Ivy Leaguer (Yale and Harvard Law) to a Tea Party congressman to a zealous Trump defender who won the president’s endorsement for his gubernatorial campaign. A steady march rightward, it would seem — except that after winning an extremely narrow victory over Andrew Gillum in 2018, DeSantis then swung back to the center, with educational and environmental initiatives and African-American outreach that earned him 60 percent approval ratings in his first year in office.

Combine that moderate swing with the combative persona DeSantis has developed during the pandemic, and you can see a model for post-Trump Republicanism that might — might — be able to hold the party’s base while broadening the G.O.P.’s appeal. You can think of it as a series of careful two-steps. Raise teacher’s salaries while denouncing critical race theory and left-wing indoctrination. Spend money on conservation and climate change mitigation through a program that carefully doesn’t mention climate change itself. Choose a Latina running mate while backing E-Verify laws. Welcome conflict with the press, but try to make sure you’re on favorable ground.

This is not exactly the kind of Republicanism that the party’s donor class wanted back in 2012: DeSantis is to their right on immigration and social issues, and arguably to their left on spending. But the trauma of Trumpism has taught the G.O.P. elite that some compromise with base politics is inevitable, and right now DeSantis seems like the safest version of that compromise — Trump-y when necessary, but not Trump-y all the time.

 

Here's the fun part: DeSantis is going to eventually run up against Trump. The person best equipped to remove DeSantis from the picture may be Donald Trump himself.

Certainly Biden or Harris will have a rough time beating Trump back in 2024. But I think DeSantis would be an even tougher opponent, just because FOX News wants him to be.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

It was only a matter of time before GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and House Republicans made their post-Trump move towards being the party of Whites official with the formation of the America First caucus, complete with a focus on "Anglo-Saxon political traditions".

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) are starting a right-wing caucus in Congress that seeks to “follow in President Trump’s footsteps,” which could prove yet another thorn in the side of Republican leaders already struggling to unite a bitterly divided party.

According to a seven-page policy platform published by Punchbowl News, the group wants members to display “a certain intellectual boldness” and be willing to “step on some toes and sacrifice sacred cows” – in other words, break with the GOP on some issues.

Among the group’s positions are a belief in unfounded claims of widespread election fraud and support for voting restrictions, as well as an effort to roll back all coronavirus safety measures and “make sure we do not overreact to a pandemic in this same way again.”

A lengthy passage on immigration says the U.S. is “a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,” which is “threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse.”

Under “infrastructure,” the platform promotes “architectural, engineering and aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture,” echoing Trump’s now-revoked executive order banning many modern architectural styles for federal government buildings.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who Punchbowl reported had “agreed to join,” told Forbes he is “looking” at joining the America First Caucus but said he “hadn’t seen” the language about immigration, claiming the group is “not supposed to be about race at all.”

“We’re stronger, you know, as diversified,” Gohmert said when asked about the incendiary language in the platform, adding “there’s some things that helped make us strong – slavery nearly destroyed us, it was a horrendous thing.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who is under federal investigation for an alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old, tweeted he is “proud” to be joining the caucus, which he said will “end wars, stop illegal immigration & promote trade that is fair to American workers.”

A spokesperson for Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), denied Punchbowl’s reporting that he joined the group: "He will not agree to join any caucus until he’s had an opportunity to research their platform."

Nick Dyer, a spokesperson for Greene, confirmed the existence of the group to Forbes in a statement that said to “be on the look out for a public release for the America First Caucus platform when it’s released publicly very soon.”

Forbes has reached out to Gosar’s office for comment.

The term “Anglo-Saxon” has become increasingly controversial, particularly in academia, due to the adoption of the term and its symbology by white supremacists. A medieval studies group originally called the International Society of Anglo Saxonists even changed its name in 2019 after a member alleged it emboldens white supremacy.

“We’re taught, when we get on an airliner, before you help somebody else, you put your own mask on first, so that you are capable of helping somebody else,” Gohmert said of the caucus’ philosophy. “If we let our country go without taking care of America, making sure we’re viable for the future, then we’re not going to be in a position to help the other countries,” he added.

 

House GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is in full panic mode over this, because he knows exactly what this means for GOP chances in any 2021/2022 race where the electorate isn't at least 80% white. 

 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Friday that the Republican Party is not the party of "nativist dog whistles" in an apparent response to a new right-wing caucus that explicitly calls for promoting "Anglo-Saxon political traditions."

McCarthy issued a tweet that does not explicitly reference the new "America First Caucus" — established by GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) — but came hours after its policy platform began leaking to the media.

"America is built on the idea that we are all created equal and success is earned through honest, hard work. It isn’t built on identity, race, or religion," McCarthy wrote.

"The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln & the party of more opportunity for all Americans — not nativist dog whistles," he added.

 

Except of course here we have Republicans explicitly stating that the GOP is absolutely the party of racist, nativist dog whistles and that those who are not White and of European descent are unwelcome in the party and unwelcome in America.  Even McCarthy realizes that's a political death sentence for the GOP in a state like his own California, and increasingly in states like NC, Georgia, Michigan and Arizona, and deservedly so.

The larger issue of course is that the GOP is dispensing with the appetizer and salad course and going straight to the, well, white meat dish. There's no longer any pretending that the GOP isn't the party of Whites First, and anyone remaining in the party at this point, well.

No real doubt as to their loyalties, huh?

Vernon Learnin' The Truth

Last year a Black Georgia lawmaker, Vernon Davis, announced he would switch to the Republican party in order to endorse Donald Trump. Republicans hailed it as proof that Trump was going to win as much as a quarter of the Black vote in 2020 or more. Trump didn't even win Georgia, let alone a quarter of the Black vote nationally, it was less than half of that.

 

But then Vernon Davis decided he was going to run for GOP Gov. Brian Kemp's job, and he's learning the hard way just what Southern White Republicans think about Black Republicans who dare to be anything other than window dressing to help them hurt Democrats.

A former Democratic state legislator who switched parties after he endorsed Donald Trump launched an insurgent challenge Friday against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, setting the stage for a race that will test the former president’s influence in Georgia.

Vernon Jones aims to tap into GOP anger at Kemp for resisting Trump’s demands to overturn Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia in November, though his long record as an elected Democratic official seems certain to complicate his bid to win over Republican voters.

At a sparsely attended kickoff event outside the state Capitol, Jones delivered a roughly 30-minute speech where he called Kemp a phony conservative and pledged to replace Georgia’s voting system, which came under attack by pro-Trump conspiracy theorists after Biden’s victory.

As he signed autographs for a small group of supporters, Jones refused to answer a question about how he can attract GOP support as a lifelong Democrat or say whether he expects to receive Trump’s endorsement.

The former president has repeatedly promised to back a primary challenger to Kemp, though it’s not yet clear whether he’ll side with Jones, who gained national attention after he publicly supported Trump’s reelection campaign a year ago. Jones formally switched to the GOP in January, after his term in the Legislature expired.

Even with Trump’s help, Jones faces a steep challenge with the Georgia GOP electorate. Though recent polls show Kemp has been damaged by his falling out with Trump, the first-term governor’s outspoken support for a controversial package of new election restrictions has helped him rally the party’s base.

In recent weeks, Kemp has been a mainstay on conservative cable TV shows and enjoyed raucous receptions at grassroots meetings across the state, seemingly dissuading better-known Republican rivals such as former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, whom Trump once recruited to run.

What’s more, Jones must answer for a long history of controversy in public office that includes allegations of sexual assault that he has denied, along with votes that could alienate Republicans such as Jones’ opposition to a strict anti-abortion “heartbeat” measure that Kemp signed into law in 2019.

Kemp and his allies are eager to portray a contrast between the state’s first lifelong Republican governor since Reconstruction and a party-switching Democrat who only endorsed Trump last year. Bobby Saparow, Kemp’s campaign manager, recited a list of Jones’ stances that included his support for Barack Obama, backing of firearms restrictions and opposition to anti-abortion legislation.

“He is not a Republican, and he is certainly not a conservative,” Saparow said. “Assuming he actually stays in the race, we look forward to contrasting Gov. Kemp’s successful conservative record with Vernon Jones’ liberal, corrupt tenure in public life.”

 

To recap: Vernon Jones staying on the sidelines as a Republican to act as a pro-Trump prop, proof that Democrats have failed Black America.  Vernon Jones running for office as a Republican, proof Jones is a traitor, no different from The Hated Barack Obama™.

Enjoy your new "friends", Vernon. They hate you more than Democrats ever will for being a Republican.

Stone Cold Justice

His felony lying to Congress sentence commuted by Trump, Roger Stone thought he got away with it.

He did not get away with it.

 

The Justice Department on Friday sued Roger Stone, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, accusing Stone and his wife, Nydia, of owing nearly $2 million in unpaid federal income taxes and fees.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says the couple underpaid their income taxes by $1,590,361 from 2007 to 2011. It further says Stone, 68, did not pay his full tax bill in 2018, coming up $407,036 short. The couple, the suit alleges, used a commercial entity to "shield their personal income from enforced collection and fund a lavish lifestyle despite owing nearly $2 million in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties."

Stone, a well-known Republican political operative and a friend of the former president, briefly served as a campaign adviser to Trump.

"This is yet another example of the Democrats weaponizing the Justice Department in violation of the rule of law," Stone said in a statement Friday night. "I will fight these politically motivated charges and I will prevail again."

Stone was on his way to federal prison in July 2020 when then-president Trump commuted his sentence. Stone was sentenced earlier that year to serve 40 months in prison for lying to Congress about his efforts to connect with WikiLeaks in hopes of digging up dirt on Trump's 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton. The lead prosecutor in the case said Stone had lied because the "truth looked bad for Donald Trump." Stone was convicted of all seven counts against him.

Stone said Friday, "This case against me is motivated by blood lust and liberal hysteria over the fact that President Trump saw the clear corruption of my trial and had the strength and the courage to correct this injustice by issuing me a grant of clemency."

The Stones deposited more than $1 million in accounts belonging to a commercial entity, Drake Ventures, instead of personal accounts, thereby frustrating collection efforts, the government said in the filing.

From those accounts, the pair covered a down payment on a Fort Lauderdale condominium, paid for personal expenses and covered some of their tax liabilities, the lawsuit alleges, calling the entity an "alter ego" of the Stones.

Additionally, the filing wants to thwart the Stones' transfer of their $525,000 Florida condominium to an entity known as the Bertran Family Revocable Trust, which the government says is controlled by Nydia Stone and has as beneficiaries their children, Adria Stone and Scott Stone.

A tax lien was being sought against the property, it said. The suit also seeks a judgment for $1,590,361.89.

The government also said the Stones at one point entered into an agreement to cover taxes owed through monthly installments of nearly $20,000, but stopped paying. Additionally, the filing alleges that in 2018, Stone filed his federal income tax return as "a married individual filing separately from his spouse" and owes an additional $407,036.84 for that year alone.

 

Stone really does deserve a long prison sentence for his role in Trump's Russia collusion. But I'll take the Justice Department and IRS hounding him for every penny and rendering him bankrupt and destitute. Stone can scream all he wants to, but nobody will save him this time.

Last Call For Immigration Nation, Con't

The good news is that the Biden administration is scrapping the ridiculous "Mulsim Ban" restrictions on refugees entering the US. The bad news is that for now, the Biden administration is keeping the Trump regime's historically low levels of refugees allowed in.

President Joe Biden on Friday signed an emergency determination to speed refugee admissions to the U.S., but kept his predecessor’s historically low cap of 15,000 refugees for this year, triggering an outcry from advocates for refugees and even Biden allies.

Many were surprised Biden has not replaced the cap by former President Donald Trump, having submitted a plan to Congress two months ago to quadruple that number. The administration has indicated he may still do so.

For now, Biden is adjusting the allocation limits set by Trump, which officials said have been the driving factor in limiting refugee admissions. The new allocations provide more slots for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Central America and lift Trump’s restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Since the fiscal year began on Oct. 1, just over 2,000 refugees have been resettled in the U.S. A senior administration official said Biden’s new allocations, formalized in an emergency presidential determination, could result in speedier admissions of already screened and vetted refugees in a manner of days.

Refugee resettlement agencies applauded speedier admissions and more slots but were disheartened Biden did not touch Trump’s cap, the lowest since the program began 41 years ago.

“It sends an important message to make it higher and now Biden will still be presiding over and has essentially put his stamp of approval on the lowest refugee admissions cap in history at a time of global crisis,” said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, a Maryland-based Jewish nonprofit that is one of nine agencies that resettles refugees in the U.S.

Biden presented a plan to Congress more than two months ago to raise the ceiling on admissions to 62,500 and to eliminate restrictions imposed by Trump that have disqualified a significant number of refugees, including those fleeing war.

But Biden has not issued a presidential determination since his administration notified Congress, as required by law. The action does not require congressional approval and past presidents have issued such presidential determinations that set the cap on refugee admissions shortly after the notification to Congress.

New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez urged Biden to act.

“Failing to issue a new Determination undermines your declared purpose to reverse your predecessor’s refugee policies,” the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote in a letter to Biden.

Menendez said it also makes it unlikely that the program can hit its target next budget year of 125,000, which Biden has pledged to do.

Biden has given no explanation for the inaction, other than to say “it’s going to take time to rebuild what has been so badly damaged, but that’s precisely what we’re going to do.”

This is an odd way of doing things, and frankly this is the one thing so far that I really think Biden is screwing up and badly. There's no reason to keep the 15,000 cap on refugees right now, COVID-19 or not, and if that's the actual case, then Biden needs to make that clear.

Saying "well we're going to do better in the future" when you have the opportunity to do better now is not doing better.

I don't get it, but Biden can, and should, fix it as soon as possible.

Now would be a good start.

Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

America is getting back to normal as COVID-19 is being addressed, and by "normal" I mean we're getting back to killing each other with firearms in mass shootings, that most American of 21st century traditions.

A gunman opened fire outside and inside a FedEx facility near Indianapolis' main airport Thursday night, killing eight people, wounding several others and sending witnesses running before taking his own life, police said. 

Police were called to the facility at about 11 p.m. local time for what has become the country's deadliest shooting since 10 people were killed March 22 at a grocery in Colorado.
The names of the victims or gunman were not immediately released. 

"The (gunman) came into the parking lot, and I believe he exited his vehicle and quickly began shooting. ... The first shooting occurred in the parking lot, and then he went inside and did not get very far into the facility at all," Indianapolis police Deputy Chief Craig McCartt told CNN early Friday.

"I think that it probably only lasted one to two minutes, from what we're hearing," he said. 

The incident marks at least the 45th mass shooting in the United States since the Atlanta-area spa shootings on March 16. CNN considers an incident to be a mass shooting if four or more people, excluding the gunman, are shot and wounded or killed. 

Police in Indianapolis arrived "to a very chaotic scene, with victims and witnesses running everywhere," McCartt said. 

McCartt said he believes the gunman killed himself as officers encountered him. No police officer fired, he said. 

The motive for the shooting was not immediately known, Indianapolis police spokeswoman Genae Cook said.

Some 45 mass shooting just in the last 30 days. Yep, America's back to normal.

Gunmerica. 

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Two major Russiagate stories breaking this week, first, the Treasury Department has found that Russian collusion straight up happened between the Trump people and Russian intelligence, as I've been saying for years now.

 

The U.S. Treasury Department said Thursday that Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate and ex-employee of Paul Manafort, “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy,” during the 2016 election, an apparently definitive statement that neither Special Counsel Robert Mueller nor the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation made in their final reports.

“This is new public information that connects the provision of internal Trump campaign data to Russian intelligence,” Andrew Weissmann, who led the prosecution of Manafort for the Special Counsel, told Just Security on Thursday.

The eye-catching statement was included in an announcement of new sanctions related to Russian interference in U.S. elections. The Biden administration took a number of steps Thursday to punish Russia, not only for election interference, but also the SolarWinds cyberattack, its ongoing occupation of Crimea, and human rights abuses.

Kilimnik was one of 16 individuals the Treasury Department announced it was sanctioning for attempting to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election at the direction of the Kremlin. The Treasury Department is also imposing new sanctions on 16 entities, including several Russian disinformation outlets.

Kilimnik is, according to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, a Russian Intelligence Services officer who became central to investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election thanks to his close ties to Manafort, who served as Donald Trump’s campaign manager in 2016. After being indicted in 2018 on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice related to his unregistered lobbying work on behalf of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Kilimnik is now being targeted by Treasury for “having engaged in foreign interference in the U.S. 2020 presidential election.” The FBI is offering a reward of $250,000 for information related to his potential arrest. He is currently residing in Russia.

The Treasury Department’s statement about Kilimnik and his role in the 2016 election definitively connects dots that previous investigations did not.

 

This should have been the definitive information that saw Trump removed from office and charged with treason. This is what he fashioned his entire cabinet to protect him from: the knowlege that his own campaign manager gave campaign data to Russian intelligence in order for the Russians to help him steal the election.

 

And Trump did prevail in 2016. 

The other story is that "Bountygate" most likely did not happen.

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.

“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks on U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a senior administration official said.

“This information puts a burden on the Russian government to explain its actions and take steps to address this disturbing pattern of behavior,” the official said, indicating that Biden is unprepared to walk the story back fully.

Significantly, the Biden team announced a raft of sanctions on Thursday. But those sanctions, targeting Russia’s sovereign debt market, are prompted only by Russia’s interference in the 2020 election and its alleged role in the SolarWinds cyber espionage. (In contrast, Biden administration officials said that their assessment attributing the breach of technology company SolarWinds to hackers from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service was “high confidence.”)

“We have noted our conclusion of the review that we conducted on the bounties issue and we have conveyed through diplomatic, intelligence, and military channels strong, direct messages on this issue, but we are not specifically tying the actions we are taking today to that matter,” a senior administration official told reporters in reference to the bounty claims.

According to the officials on Thursday’s call, the reporting about the alleged “bounties” came from “detainee reporting”–raising the specter that someone told their U.S.-aligned Afghan jailers what they thought was necessary to get out of a cage. Specifically, the official cited “information and evidence of connections to criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government” as sources for the intelligence community’s assessment.

Without additional corroboration, such reporting is notoriously unreliable. Detainee reporting from a man known as Ibn Shaikh al-Libi, extracted from torture, infamously and bogusly fueled a Bush administration claim, used to invade Iraq, about Saddam Hussein training al Qaeda to make poison gas.

 

Pay attention to those who say these stories "cancel each other out" or even that the Bountygate assessment update actually nullifies the entire Russia story.

 

It does not.

 

Trump's campaign gave information to Russian intelligence through Kilimnik.

 

It was collusion.

 

That's the story.

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The now former police officer who killed Daunte Wright on Sunday was arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter in Minnesota.

Former Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly A. Potter was charged Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Daunte Wright, joining just a handful of officers who have faced charges after shooting someone they said they intended to shock with a Taser.

Potter, a 26-year veteran of the department who resigned Tuesday, was arrested and booked into the Hennepin County jail shortly after noon. Bodycam footage from the shooting Sunday shows her shouting "Taser!" three times before killing Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, with a single shot from her Glock 9-millimeter handgun. Police officials blamed the death on human error.

Protests over Wright's killing have focused on how Potter, who is white, carried out a sequence of events that led to the death of a Black motorist who had been stopped for a minor traffic violation. Wright cooperated with Potter and another police officer at first, but a criminal complaint filed Wednesday showed how the encounter turned violent after one of the officers told Wright he was being arrested on a warrant.

Potter fired her gun 12 seconds after Wright pulled himself free from the officers.

Potter was released from jail Wednesday evening after posting $100,000 bond. Her attorney, Earl Gray, was unavailable for comment.

Attorney Ben Crump, who said he has been retained by Wright's family, issued a statement with co-counsel Jeff Storms and Antonio Romanucci in response to the charges.

"While we appreciate that the district attorney is pursuing justice for Daunte, no conviction can give the Wright family their loved one back," the statement said. "Driving while Black continues to result in a death sentence. A 26-year veteran of the force knows the difference between a Taser and a firearm."

 

Second-degree manslaughter is a maximum 10-year/$20k fine sentence in Minnesota. A judge could really make her life hell in sentencing.

 

But there has to be a conviction first, and 99% of the time, police officers are never convicted. And why would they be? Who wants to be a juror in a case like this, knowing that the police have your name and address? You vote to convict a cop, suddenly you're getting pulled over for traffic stops every week.  And if you're a Black juror? Well, you get one traffic stop, and then maybe the officer on the scene mistakes their taser for a service Glock too.

And even then, the most likely sentence is probation. She quietly gets hired back at a desk job after the trial. 

 

And Daunte Wright is still dead.

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

Russian To Actual Judgment, Con't

Biden drops the hammer this week on Putin and company as tensions mount along the Russia-Ukraine border.

 

The Biden administration imposed a series of new sanctions on Russia, including restrictions on buying new sovereign debt, in retaliation for alleged misconduct related to the SolarWinds hack and efforts to disrupt the U.S. election.

The new measures sanction 32 entities and individuals, including government and intelligence officials, and six Russian companies that provide support to the Russian government’s hacking operations. The U.S. is also expelling 10 Russian diplomats working in Washington, including some intelligence officers.

The Biden administration also is barring U.S. financial institutions from participating in the primary market for new debt issued by the Russian central bank, Finance Ministry and sovereign wealth fund. Those limits would take effect from June 14.

Russian bonds fell and the ruble dropped the most since December on the news.

“What President Biden is going to announce today, we believe, are proportionate measures to defend American interests in response to harmful Russian actions, including cyber intrusions and election interference,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN early Thursday. “His goal is to provide a significant and credible response but not to escalate the situation.”

The sanctions reflect an attempt by the U.S. to balance the desire to punish the Kremlin for past misdeeds but also to limit the further worsening of the relationship, especially as tensions grow over a Russian military buildup near Ukraine.

The latest moves come just two days after President Joe Biden warned Vladimir Putin the U.S. would defend its interests but also offered the possibility of a summit meeting in the coming months, drawing a cautiously positive response from Moscow.

Restrictions blocking U.S. investors from buying ruble-denominated Russian government debt have long been seen as the “nuclear option” in financial markets, where the bonds, known as OFZs, have been a popular investment. Foreigners now hold about a fifth of that debt, worth roughly $37 billion.

 

Hitting Putin right where it hurts, his country's version of Wall Street's Big Casino, is a real step towards real sanctions with real teeth. And they never would have happened under the Former Guy™. Meanwhile the US is backing off plans (for now) to send Naval warships into the Black Sea.

We'll see how this balances out, but I would expect we'll have Putin's response in the Crimea or Donbass regions of Ukraine rather than the halls of Washington.

Nine Will Get You Thirteen, Supremely

Democrats are pushing for new legislation to raise the number of Supreme Court Justices from nine to thirteen, and while the bill has no chance of getting past the filibuster, it's a big blue marker that the Biden-era Dems are laying down. The real fight comes after the bill.

Four Democratic members of Congress plan to introduce legislation that would add four seats to the Supreme Court, which would, if passed, allow President Biden to immediately name four individuals to fill those seats and give Democrats a 7-6 majority.

The bill, which is being introduced by Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Hank Johnson (D-GA), and Mondaire Jones (D-NY) in the House and by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) in the Senate, is called the Judiciary Act of 2021, and it is very brief. It amends a provision of federal law providing that the Supreme Court consist of a chief justice and eight associate justices to read that the Court shall consist of ‘‘a Chief Justice of the United States and twelve associate justices, any eight of whom shall constitute a quorum.”

Although the Constitution provides that there must be a Supreme Court, it leaves the question of how many justices shall sit on that Court to Congress. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Court originally had six seats, and it briefly had 10 seats under President Lincoln.

Realistically, the bill is unlikely to pass anytime soon. Until recently, adding seats to the Supreme Court was considered a very radical tactic — President Franklin Roosevelt proposed similar legislation in 1937, and it did not end well for him. President Biden has in the past expressed reluctance to add seats to the Court.

But the politics of Supreme Court reform have moved very quickly in recent years, and it’s possible to imagine a critical mass of lawmakers rallying behind Court expansion if a majority of the current justices hand down decisions that are likely to outrage Democrats, such as a decision neutralizing what remains of the Voting Rights Act.

The new court-expansion bill would effectively neutralize a half-decade of work by Republicans to manipulate the Senate confirmation process in order to ensure GOP control of the nation’s highest Court.

 

So-called "moderate" Senate Republicans don't like being powerless. They particularly don't like that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is doing a better and more efficient job of playing the concern troll but voting with our side in the end role than they ever could. But this is something they know they can block.

The question is what happens now?

Most likely, nothing. No Republican is going to allow this to pass when they could stop it. But it does become a hell of a negotiation starting point, doesn't it?